The Revealing

I got off my chair and walked over to the mirror at the end of my closet. I stared at my reflection. The one feature I would never change about myself was my long light brown hair. The colour was unfortunate, but dyeing it would ruin it. I had knobby knees but long legs. My eyes were doe eyes and plain brown as well. My skin wasn’t pale, but it wasn’t tan either. I blushed easily. My nose was straight and small, and I had full lips, which Mason said guys found attractive, but I hated them; they looked too puffy all the time. I felt awkward. My legs were long, but I wasn’t exactly tall, more of an average height. I could still wear heels and be shorter than most guys.

The thing was that if I ever met any guys Mason did approve of, they were all tall anyway and kind of overprotective. I would dump them faster than you could say, “Salami,” if they so much as told me it wasn’t safe for me to do something. One overbearing bodyguard was enough.

As I looked in the mirror, distracted by my own appearance, at first, I did not notice the figure sneaking up behind me. It just looked like a shadow in the background—but then it moved. I whipped around so fast I got dizzy, and I bent my knees and kicked as hard as I could. The figure didn’t even budge. He was wearing a black robe and black gloves, which he was using to secure my foot in his tight grip. As I tried to wriggle it free, he twisted it to the side. It was the wrong side. My ankle cracked, and I screamed. Then a new figure came up behind me and covered my mouth with its huge hands—strong ones, most likely male. I sucked in a breath through my nose and yanked my probably broken ankle out of the figure’s hands, which he was not expecting, and I freed it. I elbowed the figure holding my face in the gut and heard a grunt, and in a flash of light, the room became pitch black and still.

I moved, and a string of painful sensations ran up and down my leg. I squeaked and then whimpered. Where was Mason? I wasn’t positive that the two persons who had attacked me were gone, so I limped as fast as I could bare to my bed and pulled myself up. It was so quiet it terrified me. I tried to turn on my lamp, but the power was out. Great. After about 10 minutes of sitting extremely still and straining to hear any movement in the silence of my house, I opened the drawer beside my bed and got my flashlight. I shined it around the room, praying I wouldn’t see a person standing in the dark.

When I was sure there was no one in my bedroom, I turned the flashlight to my throbbing foot. It was swollen and red; it was definitely broken. I panicked. Are the people still in the house somewhere? All I know is they are not in the room with me. What if they got Mason? My breathing sped up, and I started to shake. I heard a slight creak, and my heart practically jumped from my chest. My hand with the flashlight whipped in that direction, and I trained the light on the spot the sound had come from.

I tried to remain as still as I could muster. I grabbed a decorated rock that I’d made when I was little from my nightstand and kept it by my side, so at least I had a decent weapon in case they came back. I took in a small breath and tried to calm down. I thought about my scenario and tried to analyze exactly what had happened so that I could explain every single detail to Mason when he came home, but I was growing light-headed from the pain. Deciding to do the rational thing, I put my foot in a makeshift splint. It would do, at least until Mason came home, and I went to the kitchen to get some pain medication. I pulled myself up onto my good leg and tried to hop. Even though the leg I was using wasn’t injured, it still was painful to do even the simple movement of sitting up. I was scared to go, but I knew I wanted the relief. I would just have to be silent and careful. I got to my door and opened it, slowly pushing against the hinges so it wouldn’t squeak—something I’d learned to do when I was a child. Then I slowly stuck my head into the hallway and held the rock tightly in my hand. I pushed the flashlight into the hallway as well so that I could have eyes where I could not see. I slowly and quietly, biting my tongue every time a shock of pain shot up my leg, made my way there.

Finally, I got to the kitchen. I was covered in sweat, and the pain was starting to take its toll, so I quickly went into the medicine cabinet, grabbed the fastest-working medication I knew of and took two. An added bonus was the side effect of drowsiness, which was helpful since I was growing exhausted from the pain. On the way back to my room, every sound made me flinch. I was terrified that those men would return. I entered my dark room, which was lit only by glowing stars, trying to keep my eyes open and stay aware. As soon as I realized that it was a bad idea to take the drowsy medication, my brain began to shut down into sleep mode almost immediately. I hobbled back into my bed just in time to collapse into a dream. I could only pray it wouldn’t be a nightmare.

I dreamed of a childhood memory.

I was laughing and running with Mason. It was a few years after Carson had disappeared on me, thus forcing me into playing with the only other child around for miles, Mason. I was not pleased that my only friend, Carson, had deserted me, but Mason wasn’t all that bad. At least he played pretend the way I said to. He always listened to my side of the story and made sure to do exactly what I instructed him to do. I was a little annoyed that he needed instruction, whereas Carson knew his part well.

“No! Mason, you have to go into the cave now!”

I pushed him toward the pillow fort on the couch. Sometimes he slipped out of character.

“But those are pillows.”

I glared at him.

“Okay, okay, I’m going into the cave now.”

He was doing it all wrong.

“Don’t tell people you’re going in there. You’re supposed to be sneaking up on the dragon that took the princess’s toy. If you say you’re going in the cave, he will hear you and burn you alive.” I sat on top of the couch, conducting the story as Mason unwillingly played to my demands.

“But if I don’t say anything, how will the toy know I’m coming to rescue it?”

“Her. The toy is a girl, and the princess needs her. Now, go get her, and don’t be a clumsy knight!”

He rolled his eyes and climbed into the pillow fort. I laughed when he made fake dragon noises, even though they were all wrong. It was funny watching him shake up the entire pillow fort, showing that he was battling the ferocious dragon to save my toy. I was always the princess. Of course, I was not the one to be saved; I didn’t like the damsel-in-distress roll. I liked to order around my knight to make sure he was doing his job right. That was when something different happened in my dream. Instead of Mason’s head popping out and scaring me off the top of the couch, as had happened in my favourite memory, it was Carson’s head. I was shocked.

“Hey, No One, what are you up to?”

I just stared at him, my eyes bulging in disbelief. After not seeing Carson for so long, finding him in the past, in my memory, was surprising.

“Um, I’m playing make-believe with Mason. Is he in there?”

Carson moved one of the pillows forming the roof of my improvised cave. “Nope, haven’t seen him. He is a horrible knight. He is making the princess wait too long.”

I nodded and kicked the fort where I thought Mason was hiding, and a new voice I hadn’t heard before came out of the bulge under the blankets.

“Ow! Carson, I thought you said she wouldn’t notice.”

I saw a new face in my memory—a little boy with hair as black as coal and eyes as green as last year’s Christmas tree, maybe even greener. I stared at the boy.

“Who are you?” I said.

The boy turned, still rubbing his head, where I had most likely kicked him, and looked right at me. He smirked. “Hey there. I thought you would remember me.”

“This is not part of this memory,” I said in my high-pitched, squeaky voice.

“It’s me—Damian.” He put unneeded emphasis on his name, as if it were important.

My eyes narrowed. “I haven’t met you yet. Why are you here?”

He looked puzzled. “You met me today in school.”

All of a sudden, the scene of my dream changed. I was in the detention room, but I was still the young girl from my previous memory, and Damian and Carson were younger too.

“Not you. I met the bigger Damian. He is mean. I don’t like him.” I stuck my tongue out at him.

He smiled at me. “Yeah, I can’t help it. It’s Carson’s fault. He won’t let me be nice to you.”

I grew angry. “Carson? He isn’t here. He left a long time ago, and you say it’s his fault? You don’t even know him. He is nice and wouldn’t let anyone treat me like the big you did today!”

I was yelling. The room started to shake. I thought I was waking up, but I didn’t understand why I wanted to know this little Damian. I tried to calm down. All of a sudden, there was a pause in my dream, and only Carson and I were aware of it.

“Carson, why? Why does he blame you? It’s not true, right? You’re my best friend. He was so mean to me.” I felt my eyes start to water, and tears flowed out of them.

“Listen, Obsidian.”

I was suddenly aware and cautious. He never called me that. He always used some pet name. He was a year older than I was, so he always called me things that pertained to my being small. He would call me Tiny or Little. The most common name he called me, which was closest to my real name, was Obsi. He never called me Obsidian.

“I put myself in this dream to talk to you—to warn you. There are people out there who want what you possess.”

The walls were tumbling all around me and breaking everything in the room.

“When it is time, I will protect you an—”

Out of nowhere, a robed person with a hood came in and shot Carson. His body went limp, and the entire room collapsed onto me as I screamed myself awake.

Mason was leaning over me with a concerned, overprotective look. I could tell from his expression that he already knew about my ankle.

“What happened?”

His tone sounded controlled, but I knew he wanted to explode—not on me but on whoever had done this to me. It was obvious this was not an injury born out of clumsiness on the stairs. I strained, trying to remember.

“There were two guys—well, I think they were guys. They were in robes. I don’t know why they were here, but one guy grabbed my foot and just twisted it. The other guy came behind me. I pulled free and elbowed him in the stomach, and then they just disappeared.” I sounded crazy.

Mason looked angrier than I had ever seen him. He jerked his body off my bed, kicked the nightstand and broke it in two. I’d never known he was that strong.

“There is a lot you don’t know, Obsidian.”

I looked up at him. It was as if he answered my thought.

“And I have not told you everything about your mom and dad.”

I stared up at him.

“Get comfortable. This is going to take a bit of time. But first, I’m going to fix this.”

He walked over to my foot and blew on it. Instantly, the pain was gone, and the swelling started to go down. I wiggled my toes. With my eyes wide open, I turned to Mason in wonder.

“It’s always best to keep the Halflings under the radar as long as possible and even to keep what they are away from the Halflings themselves. You, Obsidian, are a Halfling.” He paused for a moment to let me take in this information.

“What are Halflings?”

He seemed surprised that I was not freaking out at the moment. I was a little surprised myself. Maybe the dream I’d had was to prepare me for what was coming.

“They are exactly what they are called—half. Half human and …”

My eyes widened more as I waited for him to finish.

“Half Tharsion. To you, it would be considered an alien. The planet your other half comes from is called Thare. It’s a lot like here, I’m told.”

My jaw dropped, and his head cocked to the side as he waited for a reaction, one that would not come.

“We are not like aliens portrayed in the movies—green, with big, bulgy heads and beady black eyes. We actually look quite human. We function similarly too. But we have extensions—gifts, you might call them.”

I grew excited. “Are you saying we have powers? Oh! Oh! Can we fly? Can we change shape and jump through walls a—”

His expression answered my questions, and I lowered the volume on my imagination for the time being. I let him continue.

“The Tharsions are the full-blooded aliens, as some would call them. They all have powers. Some have similar ones, but no two are ever the exact same. Most of the elders have a strange thirst for power, even though they are typically in charge already. When a Tharsion is born, a human opposite is born along with it. We call them opposites, because males are opposite females, and the females are opposite the males. Yet not all opposites are Tharsion and human pairs. Halflings can have opposites as well. As long as there is human in their DNA, they will be able to have a Tharsion for an opposite.

“Opposites are important for our gifts’ survival. When we have children, the gift we are born with stays with us; however, if we have children with those who are not our opposite, our gift is weakened, so we can pass it on to our children. We came here to find our opposites and to save the humans. Earth is dying. The elders persuaded the Tharsions to come to Earth with thoughts of love and finding our true mates, because like the humans, we settled for less than what we deserve. We did not know, however, there was a plan behind the elders’ proposition.

“Along with the thirst for power comes an undeniable greed. The elders have special gifts—ones that the common Tharsion does not possess. They can consume another’s gift and have it for themselves. We have been here for a long time. Many noticed the disappearance of our kind. Once one’s gift is consumed by another, his or her life source is consumed as well. Unfortunately for the elders, being too greedy gave them away, and their lust for power was their downfall. If one takes in too many life sources, he dies, along with those he has consumed. And the power dies along with them. No two Tharsions have the same gift. Yes, they may be similar, but they are never the same.”

I looked at Mason with eyes full of wonder, curiosity and shock. I was speechless, unsure how to respond. So I waited as he picked up the water bottle on my floor, which was once sitting on my nightstand, and took a huge gulp before continuing.

“The elders did not like dying, because it made their group look weak. So instead of consuming the powers, they are now killing off the powers. Typically, when a Halfling is born, it is born with a sibling. The females are the only ones that get the special gifts. Some of those gifts are even stronger than the ones that the elders possess. The males, however, are almost exactly human, but one small difference. They are ridiculously strong. It is almost impossible to overpower one. They are always born first, and their job is to protect the female Halfling.”

I was confused. “But, Mason, I don’t have an older brother. How can I be a Halfling?”

He smiled. “Well, you, Obsidian, are special. You have a very strong gift, but no one knows exactly what it is yet. Only you can find it. No one knows why you don’t have a protector. That is why I’m here. My charge was lost a while ago. There was nothing I could have done to stop it.” He looked at his feet, and my heart ached for him, but he looked back up and continued.

“Some of the Tharsions are still on the side of the humans and want to protect them, to keep them safe. It was actually your father who discovered that without our human opposites, the Tharsions don’t live very long. If we don’t have each other, we will all die out. The elders recently outlawed finding one’s opposite. The punishment for the crime was so unbearable that the lawbreaker would die soon after. They kill your opposite in front of you. When you first, uh …” Mason grew nervous and fumbled his words—trying to find the right one, I suppose. “When you first mate with your opposite, there is a bond so strong it keeps them alive for much longer than the estimated life span of a human.”

“How much longer?”

“Almost two hundred years.”

My eyebrows rose. “So you’re telling me that there are people on this earth over two hundred seventy-five years old?” I asked with disbelief and sarcasm tinting my tone.

“Actually, no, most of the elders find them before they live longer than one hundred twelve years. It is quite sad, really.”

I shut my mouth again.

“The elders have convinced a big chunk of our species that the reason for our weakness is the Halflings, and I do not doubt that this is partially true, but this actually only applies to those who have children with the person that is not their opposite. The elders convinced everyone that the Halflings affect our entire population and that they must be exterminated. Really, the elders want to remain in power and on top, and they can’t do that if all the Halflings are stronger than they are. So in a sick, twisted chain of events, those in fear of weakening their gifts are doing the completely wrong thing to keep that from happening.”

“Wait—do the Halflings have opposites too?” I remembered he’d mentioned that earlier. Then I realized what a stupid question that was.

He laughed. “Yes. Why? Do you think you have found yours?” I glared at him and pushed him off my bed. I hated him seeing me blush. Then he laughed and said, “Every time someone is born, their opposite is determined, and sometimes they have to wait for them to be born because of age gap. An opposite is just a true mate of the other. Just because your parents were opposites doesn’t mean that you don’t have one; it just means they were fated for each other.”

“So is that all of it?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” he said as he climbed back onto the mattress.

“Do the Tharsions all look exactly the same as us, and do they look like us when we’re babies?”

“Well, they are not visible to the human eye until they are twelve, when they pass initiation, which is being alone for four years. Even then, they are not completely visible, only able to be seen by other Tharsions or certain Halflings whose gift is so strong that their Tharsion half is stronger than the human half. It’s only about a year before puberty that we are able to be seen by humans and Tharsions alike. There are some features that stand out as non-human, maybe one little glitch in the system. After all, we are not human. But the humans are blind to these differences.” He paused and continued. “Any of the elders can get a shape-shifter to shape-shift into a child, hide his or her Tharsion giveaways, easily gain your trust and then consume your gift and you along with it. That was why we kept you away from reality and people.”

I swallowed. A thought occurred to me. “Why hasn’t anyone found me?”

“It’s because of me—that’s my job.”

“Then how come you can restrain yourself? Can’t you consume me too?”

My heart was conflicted. Mason basically took the place of my older brother, but I couldn’t deny that he was attractive. It still seemed weird, though. He moved closer. He looked perplexed.

“Didn’t you hear anything I told you? I can’t. One, I’m not an elder, and two, I am a guardian. The guardians cannot and will not ever kill the life source.”

I tilted my head to the side like a confused puppy, and I could almost feel his frustration with me. There I was, a girl he’d sworn to protect and a girl he had seen grow through the years, yet for some reason, I must have seemed more open for him now, more able to be with him—probably because I knew almost everything now, and he didn’t have to hide anything from me anymore. Yet I didn’t want him to see me like that. I didn’t want to feel attracted to him; he was too much my brother to be anything else. He continued.

“The females are the ones to give life, and the males, the guardians, are the ones that protect it. If they die, we all die.”

I smiled at this. Mason was sitting so close to me. It felt wrong—not dangerous, really, just wrong. I felt I was not a person he should want to be this close with. He leaned closer, and I was hoping for something to distract him with.

That was when the doorbell rang. My heart leaped for joy, and we both turned our heads.